Druze: the
great survivors

Writing in 1928, the English American Semitic scholar and Zionist, Richard Gottheil, said: “For some 900 years, a strange national-religious body has lived in Syria.

“All sorts of theories have been advanced by scholars to account for their peculiar tenets and customs. All sorts of means have been tried by their overlords to put them down.

“The scholars have been as unsuccessful as have been the overlords, and the Druze still remain the great mystery of the Lebanon mountains.”

For Eyad Abu Shakra, author, managing editor of the pan-Arab daily newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, and a specialist on the anthropology, geography, and history of the Druze, the best introduction to the identity and culture of the Druze, and the foundation of their faith under the Ismaili Shiite Fatimid caliphate in the 11th century, is to be found in the work of Dr. Najla Abu-Izzeddin, a leading Druze scholar.

In her seminal 1984 book, “The Druzes: A New Study of their History, Faith, and Society,” she recounts how the Druze community was formed in the 11^th century “in response to a religious call (da’wa) propagated from Cairo in the reign of the sixth Fatimid caliph, Al-Hakim Bi-Amr Allah.”

The call went out in the year 1017, “and aimed at universal proselytization. Missionaries were sent far and wide, and proselytes joined in large numbers.”

But the new faith would not be open to outsiders for long. Following the mysterious disappearance of one of the key historical figures in the story of the Druze, and faced with existential persecution, the elders of the faith ordered a complete halt to proselytization in 1043.

“Since then, the Druze have been an inbred community,” Abu-Izzeddin wrote.

It was the sudden dramatic reversal of fortunes in the 11th century that drove the Druze from Egypt and scattered them across the region, where they settled in the homelands that remain their strongholds to this day, “in mountain regions not easily accessible to outsiders.

“South Lebanon and Wadi Al-Taym at the foot of Mount Hermon are the principal concentrations, and the oldest, the Druze having lived there since the first years of the da’wa.”

Today, more than half the total Druze population lives in Jabal Al-Druze, south of Damascus. Small groups can also be found in villages in Jabal Al-Summaq, and the neighborhood of Aleppo, part of Damascus, and in Palestine in the region of Safad and on the slopes of Mount Carmel.

All trace their lineage to the community of the Druze founded during the reign of Al-Hakim Bi-Amr Allah, who in 996 became the sixth caliph of the Fatimid dynasty, which emerged in Tunisia in 909. By 969 the Fatimids had conquered Egypt, founded Cairo (Al-Qahirah, meaning the conqueror) as their new capital and wrested control of Jerusalem from the Baghdad-based Abbasids.

At its height, the territory controlled by the Fatimid caliphate extended clear across the crown of Africa, from Tunisia in the west to Egypt and beyond in the east, down both shores of the Red Sea, as far south in Arabia as Madinah and Makkah, and north into Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon.

The Fatimids had adopted Ismailism, a Shiite faction of Islam. To the Ismailis, Al-Hakim was the 16th imam of a line descended directly from Ali, cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, and Ali’s wife Fatimah, the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter.

As Dr Robert Brenton Betts, director of the American Research Center in Egypt, wrote in his 1988 book The Druze, “although a minority within a minority,” thanks to the adoption of the breakaway Ismaili faith the Fatimids “came to constitute a vital force within the Islamic world.”

And at some point, during Al-Hakim’s reign, a controversial belief began to grow among some Ismaili religious leaders that the sixth caliph was something more than simply the imam.

In his 2006 book, “The Druze and their Faith in Tawhid,” Druze author Dr. Anis Obeid said: “At the time, the Fatimid caliphate had been in existence for nearly 90 years, and the Ismailis, like the rest of the Shiites, were anxiously awaiting the dawn of enlightenment and justice and the end of tyranny at the hands of a redeemer (Mahdi) from the seed of Ali and Fatimah.”

It was, he added, “against this backdrop that Al-Hakim, in the eyes of his followers, was accorded the status of the awaited redeemer.”

Spreading this belief were several Ismaili da’is (or missionaries) who had arrived in Cairo from Persia and Central Asia. Prominent among them were two men, Hamza ibn Ali, and Muhammad Darazi – and the doctrine they were spreading was incendiary.

The followers of this new movement called themselves the Muwahhidun or Ahl Al-Tawhid (Monotheists or Unitarians). They still do, although at some point during their early history they became known as the Druze, a name derived from that of Darazi, or Al-Darazi, who in the earliest days of the movement fell out with his fellow missionaries.

Dr. Wissam Halawi, a social historian specializing in the medieval Islamic world and assistant professor at the University of Lausanne’s Institute of History and Anthropology of Religions, said Al-Hakim was considered “the nasut, the humanity of the human figure of God on Earth.”

He added: “People who are not very well informed will say, ‘well, the Druze are heretics, because they said that God was on Earth.’ But this is not what they were saying.”

Citing several of Hamza’s epistles to the faithful, Dr. Kais Firro, professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Haifa, defined what was meant by nasut in a paper, “The Druze Faith – Origin, Development, and Interpretation,” published in the journal Arabica in 2011. The nasut, he wrote, was “not an incarnation of God but a tagalli (manifestation) of an image through which God brings himself closer to human understanding.”

Abu Shakra said: “Those who argue the faith took a ‘different spiritual path’ overlook the fact that Islam, the last of the three major Abrahamic religions, did not reject the fundamental tenets of Judaism and Christianity, but rather ‘completed and perfected’ God’s messages.”

In his book on Islam Al-Muwahhidin, Druze scholar Dr. Anwar Abu Khuzam, said: “The tawhid faith has a deep sufi (mystic) orientation.” As for their theological beliefs, the Druze, “supplement their Islamic roots with all the philosophical and intellectual tributaries that influenced the Islamic civilization in the early fifth century of the Hijra,” he added.

Much of what is known about the tenets of the faith in its early days comes from the 111 surviving epistles, which were collected together in the 14th century in six books known collectively as the “Rasa’il Al-Hikmah,” or “Epistles of Wisdom.”

But, written as advice for scattered believers on a range of spiritual and secular subjects, these letters contain little in the way of dates and historical facts. In this vacuum of firsthand information, over time various speculative versions of the foundational years of the Druze have emerged.

The self-imposed secrecy surrounding the Druze and their faith ensured that over the centuries myths about their origins inevitably began to accumulate.

“It is impossible to understand the ethnic identity of the Druze without addressing the history of the Middle East and recalling that it is a land of ancient and overlapping civilizations,” Abu Shakra added.

“It is the cradle of the world’s three Abrahamic religions, the nexus of the two historic trade routes, the Incense Route, and the Silk Road, and is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Thus, given the conquests, intermarriages and displacements throughout history, the anthropology of the Middle East is too complex to allow for talk of pure races.”

Nevertheless, the overactive imaginations of countless Western authors and “historians” have linked the Druze variously to the Druids of ancient Britain, the secretive medieval European fraternity of Freemasonry, the subjects of the Phoenician King Hiram of Tyre, the builders of Solomon’s temple and even, in one account, “the remnant of Israel who fled the wrath of Moses after the destruction of the molten calf.”

One of the more romantic of the myths is more suited to the plot of a Dan Brown novel than the pages of a serious history book. In the 17^th century, the popular imagination in France was seized by the idea that the Druze were the descendants of the survivors of a lost army of Christian crusaders from Europe, who had fled the wrath of the victorious Mamluks after the fall of the Christian stronghold of Acre in 1291, sought refuge in the mountains of Lebanon, and never left.

By 1763 the myth had become “fact,” cemented by the publication of the book “Histoire des Druses, Peuple du Liban, forme par une colonie de Francois,” by the highly imaginative but wholly ill-informed writer Puget de Saint-Pierre.

Most Druze historians, however, agree with Emir Shakib Arslan, the prominent Druze pan-Islamist and Arabist intellectual and politician, who has contended that, while a few notable families are of Turkish and Kurdish origin, in the main the Druze are pure Arabs. On one occasion, he wrote: “No Arab outside of the Arabian Peninsula is as close to Arab purity as the Druze.”

Arab tribes, said Abu Shakra, “had already settled in many parts of today’s Syria, Iraq, and Turkey before the Islamic conquest,” as evidenced by three regions that carry Arabic tribal names. He added: “During the Umayyad era, Arab tribes had also settled in Transoxiana, including the present-day former Soviet central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.”

In her book, Abu-Izzeddin pointed out that the Druze claim to Arab origin was not motivated by considerations of self-interest, for the Arabs were no longer in the ascendant when the Druze community was constituted during the first half of the 11th century.

Non-Arab dynasties, such as the Ayyubids, Saljuks, Mamluks and, eventually, the Ottomans, were the dominant powers at that time and for centuries afterward.

Pinning down the origins, and more so the beliefs of the faith, has been a challenge that has intrigued and frequently defeated generations of historians, mainly because the Druze, notoriously unforthcoming – or uninformed – about their beliefs, prefer to remain in the shadows.

Then and now, theirs is not a faith to be worn on the sleeve, nor one that, other than for a brief period in the 11^th century, accepts converts.

To this day, a difficulty when it comes to comprehending the beliefs of the Druze is that secrecy about the faith extends even to the majority of those who follow it, as it has done since its earliest days. In the face of the persecution in 11th-century Egypt, “our ancestors the Muwahhidun shut down religiously,” Obeid said.

“Many of the Druze themselves have no idea what their faith is about, except for a few talking points,” added Obeid, whose maternal grandfather was the head of the Druze Council in Aley, Lebanon. For generations, only the select few admitted to the ranks of the uqqal have had access to the “Epistles of Wisdom,” while the juhhal have always relied upon oral instruction.

Although the Druze venerate a number of prophets – such as Jethro (Shu’aib) and Job (Ayyub) – and have shrines, their religious meetings (which they call Laylet Al-Jum’a) take place on Thursday evenings, either in the home of a senior member of the community or in the “simple and austere setting” of a community majlis, or meeting place.

Obeid said: “At the end of the preaching session the juhhal are politely excused and the inner circle of uqqal resume the process of formal worship.” This normally consisted “of reading designated passages from the ‘Books of Wisdom’ and from writings of other religious scholars.” Passages from holy books, including the Qur’an, “are read and interpreted in the light of the tenets of the faith.”

Over the years, some versions the full “Rasa’il Al-Hikmah,” the collection of 111 epistles written to followers by the original leaders of the Druze, have been published, supposedly based on manuscripts held in Western libraries. Druze religious leaders, however, have dismissed these as corruptions, created by religious opponents to misrepresent the faith.

One result of this secrecy, and of the initiate system, is that no two “ordinary” Druze appear to have exactly the same perception of the tenets of their faith and how to go about observing it.

One example is the Druze belief in reincarnation, taqammus: That there is only a limited number of souls on Earth and that when a person dies their soul is immediately transferred into another, new-born human.

“The Druze believe that life does not begin at inception and end at death. It is a continuous journey and so they believe that the distillate of any life is carried on to the next – the soul is the passenger, as it were, and the body is the vehicle. The moment the vehicle stops functioning, then the passenger moves to another, a newborn, and the journey continues,” Obeid added.

The Druze do not believe in the transmigration of souls to higher or lower beings. There was, however, “no blanket agreement among Druze regarding reincarnation,” as California State University anthropologist Anne Bennett wrote in the journal Ethnology in 2006, following a series of interviews with Druze in urban and rural areas of southern Syria.

There were, she concluded, “many who are skeptics about the phenomenon and dismiss it outright,” while at the same time, “there are many others who circulate stories and maintain a curiosity and openness about the phenomenon.”

Regardless, the Druze concept of reincarnation reflects an ultimate destination. Obeid said: “Ultimately, the purpose of this journey is to eventually reach the closest proximity to the Creator.”

There were, he added, “no known written codes or regulations that govern this religious order,” yet “its members adhere to strict rules of conduct in personal and public life and remain under continuous peer review and scrutiny.”

 For the juhhal, who comprise the vast majority of Druze, adherence to their faith is uncluttered by ritual, or even a deep understanding of its guiding scriptures, but is focused on its central doctrine of Tawhid. This, Obeid said, “refers to the attestation to the oneness of God as well as to the unity of the universe in all its aspects within the oneness of the Creator.”

This license to think – to “seek guidance in this quest (for knowledge and enlightenment) with the exercise of free will ... and the use of reason” – is embedded in the broad range of scriptures and philosophies upon which Druze thinking draws.

Although Islam, “through revelations in the Qur’an, is the foundation on which the philosophy of Tawhid is based and the gateway to such knowledge,” Tawhid also draws from other monotheistic faiths and “also from philosophical and mystical practices that preceded or were outside the scope of traditional Islam.”

None of this intellectual underpinning is lost on today’s Druze. Quoting Dr. Abdallah Najjar, a distinguished elder of the Druze and Arab American community in the US, Obeid wrote: “As a Druze, the East and West merged in me. For 1,000 years I have been in the midst of the stream of human history, championing the dignity of man and fighting for his freedom.

“As a Druze, I am a Muslim influenced by Oriental theology and Western thought, by Christian witness, Judaic law, and esoteric practice. As a Druze, I am a proud mountaineer reared in the puritan and tribal tradition of an austere and devout society.”

“The Druze are loyal to the ground they live on, and they protect it, as we’ve seen in Lebanon and Syria, and Palestine,” said Nabil Abou-Hassan, 74, who settled in the UK with his family 20 years ago.

“Wherever we are, we integrate within the society wholeheartedly – we contribute and become part of the community. It has always been this way. We are a loyal people by nature.”

But he added: “We are always mindful that we are a minority, and we are cautious about that, especially when we are back in Lebanon or Syria and such places.”

Born in Nigeria, where his father ran a road-haulage business, Abou-Hassan returned to Lebanon for schooling before joining his father in the family company. He lived for much of his working life in Nigeria with his wife, Amal, and his own children, Ramzi, now 52, and daughter Iman, 49, were born there.

He finally settled in the UK two decades after the company opened an office there and is now president of the British Druze Society, which was founded in 1983.

He said: “At that time, there were about 500 Druze in the UK. Now, things have changed. There has been an exodus of people from Lebanon and Syria, including the Druze, because of the situations there.”

More than 1,500 Druze are currently estimated to be living in the UK.

Ghassan Saab, 76, is another Druze of the same generation who was able seamlessly to transfer his life and his faith to another land and culture.

He was just 22 in 1966 when, fresh from obtaining a degree in civil engineering from the American University of Beirut, he found his way to the US city of Flint, in Michigan. There, he landed a job as a field engineer with Sorensen Gross, a long-established local building company specializing in industrial, commercial, and institutional projects.

Saab was born in 1944 in the Druze town of Choueifat, just south of Beirut, the eldest of the four children of Mahmoud and Najla Saab. When he first arrived in the US in 1966, he did not plan to emigrate permanently. But in 1970, he “made the final decision that my home is going to be the United States, and that’s when I started to work on my citizenship and ultimately my pledge of allegiance to the country.”

Success had certainly come quickly in his new land. Within five years of joining Sorensen Gross, Saab had risen rapidly through the ranks, first becoming general manager of the company and then, by 1971, owner and president. Today, he is the firm’s chief executive officer, president of a real-estate development business in Flint, and treasurer of a manufacturing services company he co-founded in 2008.

When he left Lebanon in 1966, immediately after graduating, he left behind a country that was “comparable to any European country, with a high standard of living and education. It was the medical center of the Middle East and the tourist center of the Arab world.”

Then, from the distant shore, he watched in despair as in 1975 Lebanon sank into a civil war that would last for the next 15 years.

“To watch it go down to hell, one decade after another – and now it’s hitting bottom – is just absolutely heartbreaking,” he said.

Community is all-important to the Druze, a principle witnessed by their determination throughout history not only to fit in, but also to contribute to whichever country circumstances have led them to call home.

Saab added: “I am a fully committed American with loyalty to the US as my country. This is where I make my living, this is where my friends are, this is where my employees are. This is where my community is. I live and die by this community where I am. I feel like a viable member, loyal to my community, and I have to give back to my community. I’ve been trained like that from my youth: You give back to your community.”

Saab’s devotion to his adopted nation is the story of every Druze who has ever chosen to leave their homeland and settle in another country. And the slogan of the 96-year-old American construction company of which he is CEO, “We are building on the past and constructing the future,” seems an appropriate motto for all Druze who have gone out into the wider world to build a new future for themselves and their faith.

Dedication to the US, however, has not meant turning his back on Lebanon and the wider Druze community. Saab is a past chairman and board member of the American Druze Foundation, established in 1989 to preserve Druze heritage in the US, particularly among the younger generation, and is currently co-chair of its international advisory board.

Another Lebanese in America who typifies the Druze ability to put down new roots while continuing to nurture the old is Anis Obeid, 87, whose book about the Druze was published by the Syracuse University Press.

Born in 1934 and raised in the city of Aley, the second of Ibrahim and Salma Obeid’s six children, he, and his wife Nawal have lived in Syracuse, in New York state, for the past 52 years.

The first doctor in the Obeid family, he was educated at the National College in Aley, an institution known for its nondenominational character and civic values. The school, so important to generations of children, was damaged during Lebanon’s civil war, but later restored thanks to the efforts of the Druze community in the US.

Obeid believes that the closing of the faith to newcomers was a mistake, and certainly insupportable today, in an era when “the world is open ... there is no such thing as pure-blood Druze anymore. All families are hybrids.”

But, born and raised in, “a very traditional Druze family ... I am not giving up on my heritage. On the contrary, I am very proud of it, that’s why I wrote the book,” he added.

Something of a poet, he addressed the experience of the expatriate Druze in “Hybrid,” a poem he wrote in 2011.

Alongside his work for his adopted community in the US, similar to many Druze overseas his thoughts are never far from Lebanon – as a founder and past chair of the American Druze Foundation, and a member of the AUB Alumni Association, the American Task Force on Lebanon, and the Syracuse area Middle East Dialogue group.

There are many Druze families to be found in Lebanon whose sons and daughters have ventured out into the wider world, and fathers and mothers who, having travelled abroad to work for the sake of their families, have been drawn back to the land they love.

The Druze of the mountains possess a quiet passion for nature, a connection to the rhythms of seasons and harvests that chimes with the simple spirituality of their faith.

Walid Bou Ayash, 71, who grew up in a family of farmers tending the land around the Druze town of Baakline in Mount Lebanon, 45 kilometers southeast of Beirut, said: “In my day, there were no devices, no TV. The closest thing to you was the land, the trees, agriculture, harvests, and the observance of seasons.

“This relationship, this connection and intimacy between man and his land, and man’s love for the land, was nurtured in me. It stayed with me as I grew up, and I found that man’s best friend, the best source of rest and comfort, is the land.”

He speaks poetically of a passion shared by all Druze who grew up with their past and future rooted in the soil of their homeland – a passion he passed on to his children, Rami, 40, who owns and manages a store in Halifax, Nova Scotia, 37-year-old Karem, an artist in Saudi Arabia, and Hadi, an actor.

But he knew that a love of the land alone would not be enough to prepare his children for life in a Lebanon that was changing.

“The most important mission in my life was to get them an education, and I struggled in foreign lands for them to have this, to put this weapon in their hands so they might have a future,” he added.

After Lebanon descended into civil war in 1975, he never finished his own studies and instead found work in Saudi Arabia, as a sales manager. He remained in the Kingdom for 35 years, travelling back and forth whenever he could to see his family.

He said: “The sense of responsibility toward my children is what kept me going. This was the only incentive I had. You have to rid yourself of selfishness for the sake of the humans that you were responsible for bringing here on Earth. This is very important.”

The family of Rabih Hamze, 44, is another product of the economic and social pressures that have shaped the Druze diaspora.

Hamze lives in London with his wife, Kathy, an Australian Druze, and their sons Samir, aged eight, and four-year-old Julian.

He was born in 1977 in Saudi Arabia, where his parents were living at the time, and first moved to England with them as an eight-year-old in 1985, when his father was offered a job in London.

The family stayed until 1990, “when my dad decided to take us back to the homeland after the war ended. We thought everything would be fine again in Lebanon.”

In the wake of the civil war, however, work was hard to find, so in 1991 his father returned to London. “He used to visit us back home every year, then in 1994 he and my mum decided we should all move back to the UK.”

The family has lived there ever since.

Similar to many Druze over the generations, events in the homeland ensured that building his own future was not a trouble-free affair.

He met Kathy when she was visiting Lebanon, and they embarked on a long-distance relationship between London and Australia.

Hamze said: “We were due to get engaged in 2006 but then the problems started happening between Israel and Lebanon.”

He was stuck in London and Kathy was in Lebanon. Eventually she got out to Cyprus and then back to Australia. Hamze followed, they got engaged in Australia, and finally married in 2008.

“Our story is one of war, love, and a distant relationship.” It is a description that could be applied to so many Druze relationships over the years.

Hamze now works in London as a systems manager for an e-commerce marketplace and his two sons were born in the UK. They all try to visit Lebanon every year – his father’s home village is Aabey in Mount Lebanon, and his mother is from nearby Baawerta – but nevertheless he worries about his children losing touch with their roots and culture.

In the small UK Druze population, there are no initiates to guide the community and, as Hamze knows from his own experience, “growing up here it is very hard to learn about the faith, without the knowledge of elders.”

He added: “My father used to take us to Druze activities to keep us in touch with the group and friends. I try to make more Druze friends with children of similar ages to mine, so that our children can bond and play together. I believe it will be more difficult when they are teenagers.

“Druze-to-Druze marriage is critical because it ensures that the number of Druze who aspire to maintain their faith and heritage does not decrease and that our religion does not perish.”

He fears, however, that the younger generation may think differently.

Hamze said: “The whole world and other cultures are now accessible through technology. And it is difficult for young Druze to believe in intermarriage because the faith is closed to them, and they know little about it but what their parents tell them and try to guide them to.”